Legal developments, economic, social and technical trends as well as rising energy costs have placed the topic of “energy” in the focus of German industry in recent years. In this context, companies in the cost-driven beverage and food industry analyze energy and media consumption and are looking for optimization strategies. However, a uniform approach to the recording and evaluation of media and energy consumption has not yet been established. The available data is comparable only to a limited extent due to different surveys and system limits. A reference to the current machine or process state is usually completely missing. Due to the complexity of the hybrid process chains in beverage production and packaging, with a large number of individual processes, almost no cross-machine and cross-process optimization approaches have been pursued. In a multiple use as well as recovery of media and energy flows over individual process boundaries, there are considerable potentials for increasing resource efficiency, which are unused up to now.

The HyMo_ME project explores the complex interrelations within a process chain which can be developed by a comprehensive modeling of plants, processes and production processes that influence the media and energy consumption. For this purpose, a modeling environment is created in which an arbitrary operation of the beverage industry can be imaged by means of an editor and without previous knowledge. The modeling editor will generate a configuration file that facilitates the creation of a simulation model and allows fast forecasting experiments. In addition, a measurement concept can be derived from the created model, which enables comparable measurements of media and energy consumption through standardized data points.

SimPlan and the Technical University of Munich will create the simulation environment and will support the development of the modeling Editor.

The following research partners are involved in the project:

• Adelholzener Alpenquellen
• Brauhaus Altenkunstadt – Andreas Leikeim GmbH & Co KG
• Kaspar Schulz Brauereimaschinenfabrik & Apparatebauanstalt GmbH
• Krones AG
• Pfenning Elektroanlagen GmbH
• Simplan AG
• Technische Universität München

The project is funded by the Bayerische Forschungsstiftung (Bavarian Research Fund).